Paramedics Charged in Death of Good Samaritan

(Newser)
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Two paramedics are facing charges for allegedly refusing to believe a Good Samaritan was injured as he lay dying on the street, the BBC reports. Steven Snively, 53, and Christopher Marchant, 29, arrived on the scene in Hamilton—a town about 40 miles southwest of Toronto, Canada—after local resident Yosif Al-Hasnawi was shot while intervening in an attack on an older man in December 2017. Snively and Marchant apparently thought Al-Hasnawi, 19, was faking his gunshot wound and let him lie on the sidewalk for 40 minutes before taking him away, the Globe & Mail reports.

"His dad lay down beside him, and [Al-Hasnawi] tells him in Arabic, 'I have difficulty breathing,'" says the director of an Islamic center where the young man had been celebrating with family that night. "We start to scream at the paramedics, 'Please take him to the hospital.' But we saw they didn't take him seriously." When Al-Hasnawi was taken away by ambulance, it was without sirens, to an academic research hospital rather than Hamilton's trauma center. He was pronounced dead there after 20 minutes. Following a seven-month investigation, authorities have charged Snively and Marchant with failure to provide the necessities of life. Two men are facing murder charges in Al-Hasnawi's death.